100 books like Honeybee

Carolina walks a fine line between reality and magic, a state of mind many a struggling child understands.

Stuck with her grandfather, whose mind is failing, she finds a special connection to the fantastical stories he tells of a lake and bees and a tree, all connected with love of family and one’s roots. She forms a special bond with her “crazy” grandfather.

His stories about the tree with the magical power to bring people back together especially rings true. Who doesn’t believe in the magic of trees, especially old trees with deep roots (I still do). When Carolina rescues her grandfather from the old folks home and convinces her parents not to sell the family ranch, everything comes together.

Reality and magic really do belong together.

We see them all the time. We know they’re important. We may drizzle honey on our toast, but did we ever stop to think about what this creature’s life is all about? This up-close and personal journey is so eye-opening, beautiful, and fresh. It's also so important.

The book makes us curious, makes us stop and spend a little time, and makes us care about these remarkable beings. What more could you ask for in a book?

This is a delightfully wacky book with endearing characters. Zinnia is having a bad hair day, literally. A hive of bees takes up residence in the wild and curly mane of her hair to add to her troubles—a missing brother and a mother who doesn’t seem to care. I fell in love with this book on the first page when I learned that Zinnia was about to yarn bomb a statue of her school mascot. (I’m a knitter and have fancied taking up yarn bombing myself.) Quickly-paced chapters alternate between Zinnia as narrator and the bees discussing their own perilous situation. Told with both humor and empathy, this is a book where you can’t turn the pages fast enough in order to find out how things resolve.

This book has been on steady bedtime rotation in my house for the past four years—an eternity in a child's life. Every time we turn a page, my son or I say, “This is my favorite page!”

The author’s father was a beekeeper, and that level of intimate, insider knowledge is conveyed throughout. The images are exquisite—a combination of scientific accuracy and goofy playfulness. Socha never talks down to his readers, and every page is dense with information—about how bees communicate, build honeycombs, and select a queen; about what foods are dependent on bees for pollination (hint: seemingly every common fruit and vegetable); about what dangers bees face in an era of global warming, and on and on.

There is also a second book by this author called Trees, which is equally wonderful. 

This is a book about my life—growing up in the middle of the twentieth century. Bobby Soxers, juvenile delinquents, popular music, MTV, Freedom Riders, Anti-War protestors…it’s all here, along with much more. It isn’t about the good old days; this book takes us to the heart of the culture created decades ago and still influencing us today. We knew teenage life was complex and this book reveals just why that is the case. You’ll wish it came with a playlist.

I read Fagell’s first book, Middle School Matters, before my oldest child started middle school and this one, Middle School Superpowers, the summer before my middle child started middle school and found both eased the rocky transition.

I felt so reassured by this book that middle school years do not have to actually be the worst, and my kids this age are capable of pretty amazing things. When I opened my eyes to that possibility, instead of dreading the doom-and-gloom stereotypes, I could see my own kids’ strengths and superpowers.

Reading this also reminded me that when they falter it’s part of normal growing up and not because I messed up. 

When I read this book as a young teen I admired the freedom the young characters had to be absorbed in their own worlds, and, as a result, constantly getting into scrapes and suffered scolding. Much later I re-read this and was struck by the comic magic of Tom and his friends, assumed to have died, returning to witness their own funeral. Here the boys who were constantly found wanting are now being praised without reservation. This reveals the see-saw action of the adolescent self: one moment teens see themselves as wonderful, beloved, treasured, and at another cast down, and always they carry around an “imaginary self” where they cannot escape concern about how people see them. 

On the surface, this is a coming-of-age story with a protagonist similar to many others in the genre—bright, witty, snobbish, and pissed off at almost everybody he meets. But what makes this book so good is the narrator’s intelligence and self-awareness, and the complexity of all the characters and their relationships. 

My own upbringing was a far cry from the wealthy, highly-cultured world depicted here—I grew up in a tiny town in southern Iowa, and though there was a college in town I had little access to culture—yet I could completely relate to the gay narrator’s fish-out-of-water feeling and his desire to be understood. I also loved his close relationship with his grandmother, since my grandmother was equally important to me.    

In this book, the late Peter Benson, argues that by the teenage years, with help every young person can identify their unique strength - the thing they are naturally good at and would do anyway if left to their own devices. He argues this doesn’t have to be academic. It can be things like the ability to listen, a commitment to animal welfare, a passion for the environment, anything in the creative arts, or caring for others. He discussed how every single young person can be helped to identify their ‘spark.’ I often cite Benson’s concept of ‘spark’ in my own books because it does so much to help young people feel better about themselves, find their life purpose and undo the damage our grades-obsessed, one-size-fits-all education system does to the self-worth of so many.

Girlhood was published while I was in edits and though I bought the book, I couldn’t risk reading it. The subject matter was too close to my own. What if I wanted to add or (gasp) rewrite? I’m glad I waited. Febos’ stunning essays perfectly encapsulate the confusion of adolescent girlhood, the mixed messages—from adults, from our own bodies—and the traps that lay in wait.My favorite, “The Mirror Test,” contains lines that crackle such as: “Before it carried any sexual connotation, the word slut was a term for a slovenly woman… A slut was a careless girl, hands sunk haphazardly into the dough…—eyes cast out the window, mouth humming a song, always thinking of something else. Oh was I ever a messy child. A real slut in the making.”